Build more oil pipelines

Wreckage continues to burn on July 7, 2013 after a freight train loaded with oil derailed July 6 in Lac-Megantic in Canada's Quebec province, sparking explosions that engulfed about 30 buildings in a wall of fire. Now scores of people -- perhaps as many as 80 -- are missing. Rescuers cautiously entered the charred debris Sunday, more than 24 hours after the spectacular crash that saw flames shoot into the sky and burn into the night. The accident and resulting huge fireball forced 2,000 people from their homes.
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The recent boom in U.S. oil production has always come with an asterisk: The nation now has more crude than it can move through existing pipelines, which don’t yet connect refineries with oil from non-traditional oil-producing areas such as North Dakota.

There’s no way to move much of the oil except by train.

So rail shipments of oil have soared, from about 9,500 carloads in 2008 to an estimated 650,000 this year. Not surprisingly, accidents have shot up as well.

Some are minor. When three tank cars full of North Dakota’s Bakken crude derailed in Seattle last week, for example, none of the cars fell over and no oil spilled.

Others are horrific. A year ago this month, an explosion involving 72 tank cars of Bakken oil killed 47 people in tiny Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

The problem is getting worse. More oil was spilled in railroad accidents last year alone than in the 38 years from 1975 to 2012, according to an analysis by McClatchy newspapers.

Last week, the Transportation Department proposed stricter rules for the way railroads move oil, including tougher requirements for tank cars that will require many existing tankers to be retrofitted or phased out.

The regulations could also set speed limits as low as 30 mph in some places.

Well, fine. But the obvious fix for the problem is one the Obama administration has been reluctant to embrace: more pipelines.

The most notorious example is the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from western Canada and Bakken crude from North Dakota to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. During almost six years of study, the case for building it has only gotten stronger.

Because Keystone crosses the border from Canada, it requires federal approval, and the White House has seemed unwilling to alienate environmental activists and its liberal base.

Meanwhile, the project languishes, more and more oil rides the rails, and Canada looks for customers in China and elsewhere.

Pipelines aren't a panacea. They have accidents, too. And when pipelines break, the spill is usually bigger and the environmental damage worse. But few, if any, people die, and it's not as though there's some third choice besides pipelines or railroads.

As long as 250 million vehicles on U.S. roads run almost entirely on gasoline or diesel, the nation will need oil, and some way to transport it. Transporting oil by rail isn’t going to end if Keystone is built. There's just too much oil, which is very good news.

But the urgency of the new rail safety regulations makes the case for pipelines, especially a mammoth line such as Keystone, even more compelling.